1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to hydrolyzers and bioreactors for processing organic material (i.e., rendering) and further relates generally to the apparatuses used for the rendering of animal carcasses or parts thereof into useful end products such as bone or feather meal. In addition, the present invention has proven particularly useful for processing (i.e., rendering) municipal solid waste even though the material characteristics of municipal solid waste and the rendering of animal carcass parts is distinctly different.
The present invention is primarily directed to a pressure vessel apparatus in the general nature of a hydrolyzer or bioreactor used for the reduction, decomposition, destruction and/or conversion (hereinafter “rendering”) of organic wastes generated during meat and poultry production for human consumption.
2. Description of the Related Art
Carcass disposal at meat and poultry farms is an important environmental issue. Some of the standard methods, such as burial and incineration, no longer meet the needs of operators or existing regulations. For example, prompted by recent water and air quality regulations, the poultry industry in some states and countries is giving carcass disposal top priority by supporting efforts to promote and adopt alternative disposal methods. One environmentally sound alternative for the disposal of dead birds is conventional rendering. Rendering is a reclamation process designed to recover almost 100 percent of all inedible raw poultry material and render it useful.
Rendering is a heating process that extracts usable ingredients, such as protein meals and fats. Rendering has been used for many years to convert the inedible results from the slaughtering process into meat meal, bone meal, and feather meal—all of which are highly valued as animal feed ingredients. Today, rendering plants supply 85 percent of all fats and oils used in the United States and export 35 percent of the fats and oils used worldwide. The rendering plant is a vital link between the meat and poultry grower and industries which use fats and oils.
The rendering industry relies on the hydrolyzer or bioreactor apparatus as the cooking vessel to perform the actual rendering process. However, these conventional hydrolyzer and bioreactor apparatuses which are commonly used as the cooking vessel in the rendering industry do not work when attempting to render various wastes such as municipal solid waste (“MSW”). These conventional vessels are prone to repaeted and continuous clogging when trying to process watse material such as MSW and thus require repeated down time intervals and disassembly to empty the interior of the vessel.
Municipal solid waste disposal can be generally defined as the disposal of normally solid or semi-solid materials resulting from human and animal activities that are useless and unwanted and not hazardous or toxic. Solid wastes may be further classified in the following manner: “garbage” which is decomposable wastes from food; “rubbish” which is decomposable wastes, either combustible (such as paper, wood, and cloth) or non-combustible (such as metal, glass, plastics and ceramics).
It has become known that the traditional rendering devices such as bioreactor and hydrolyzers do not work with all materials and fail miserably when trying to process MSW. Similarly, the know how associated with conventional rendering processes is not applicable to a processing of certain wastes such as MSW in a similar manner. Until now, a suitable hydrolyzer or bioreactor for sustained continuous flow and rendering of raw wastes such as MSW has not been invented.